Re: delete-selection-mode

From:

Óscar Fuentes

Subject:

Re: delete-selection-mode

Date:

Wed, 17 Mar 2010 22:09:25 +0100

User-agent:

Gnus/5.13 (Gnus v5.13) Emacs/23.1.93 (gnu/linux)

David Kastrup <address@hidden> writes:
>> Saving startup time is one of the most important qualities a product
>> can have.
>
> "appealing", not "important".
To be appealing is very important.
>> Since years ago, young users need a strong motivation for switching to
>> Emacs as it is no longer an editor that provides obvious benefits over
>> competing products.
>>
>> People will start using Emacs thanks to the availability of modes for
>> almost all languages, or thanks to features like org-mode.
>
> At one point of time you will have to decide either arguing that Emacs
> provides obvious benefits over competing products, or not.
I can expose Emacs' benefits to others. Another issue (and that was what
I was talking about) is that potential users perceive them as such
*overall*. That means that they must reach the conclussion that Emacs'
benefits are compelling enough to make the effort of switching. If
switching is hard, you'll need very strong benefits, and those are
diminishing as other editors turns better.
> When your argument requires _both_ premises, it is worthless.
>
>> Really, Emacs need to lower the entry barrier as much as possible if
>> we want to attract new users.
>
> That goal takes a second place to providing the best editor to long-term
> users.
Both things can be achieved.
> Keeping old users is more important than attracting new ones.
Who is going to stop using Emacs because he doesn't want to add a few
setq's to his .emacs file?
> Since new ones eventually become old ones anyway.
You are assuming that there will be new ones.